Web of Extinction

by John Conroe

  “Clear for flashbang,” I told my drone, pulling the last of my modified flashbangs from my vest. The pin came out and I dropped the grenade straight down the open space of the stairwell.

  Rikki slid over above the stairs just as the grenade went off with a roar that shook the building.

  “Suggest accelerated pace,” Rikki said as the vibrations on the stair treads warned that War’s pursuit continued.

  Having already reached that conclusion, I was racing and leaping, the big Decimator easily keeping pace. My ears rang from the shots and explosion, but I didn’t think the UAV whine was still present.

  Then another beam of blue shot through the space I had just vacated, melting the metal railing to red-hot liquid steel in a microsecond. Booted feet continued to pound up above and I poured on the speed, trying to outpace the Tank-Killer’s aiming algorithm.

  The running and the fighting distracted me enough that I had lost count of which floor we were passing, but we couldn’t be any more than halfway to our floor. The enemy knew we were here and all element of surprise was gone. Plum Blossom could easily escape the building long before we got to the eighteenth floor, leaving us to die a useless death. My brain was racing to come up with a plan, any plan, to keep Plum Blossom’s attention and presence here in the building.

  But what do you bait a half-ton murder bot with? What does a merciless killer machine want other than to kill people? And then I had it—the germ of an idea. Maybe some people were more important to kill than others.

  “Rikki, what drones are you sensing above and below us?” I said between gasps of air.

  “Drone labeled War is pursuing from below, accompanied by four Cranes and two Wolves. EMP burst damaged other drones in front of 55 Broadway, leaving them currently disabled. War is functioning at greatly reduced level due to EMP circuit damage and incendiary mine damage.

  “Above, twenty-six UAVs of mixed varieties have entered building through breached windows on seventeenth floor, and are currently, based on audio signals, attempting to breach the stairwell door.

  “Eighteenth floor currently occupied by CThree and two drones of type similar to Pestilence and War. Additional ground and air units are converging upon this location.”

  “Does Plum Blossom know that me and you are in the building?”

  “Unknown. Surmise that probability is high that CThree has this information.”

  “Are we still high value targets for Zone drones?”

  “Probability ninety-eight percent.”

  So, there was my answer. Plum could have left through a window or an elevator shaft at anytime. It hadn’t. Rikki and I, it seemed, were the perfect bait.

  “Gunny! Tyson! You’ll have UAVs incoming from above at any moment.”

  “Roger that!” was the response from one of them, the Gunny I think. My ears were still messed up.

  “How close is War?”

  “Approximately two floors below but gaining at the rate of .4 floors per minute.”

  “Yeah, I’m going as fast as I can. Give me an estimate of time till it reaches the next landing just above us,” I said, eye locked on said landing.

  “Seventeen seconds after you step off it.”

  I pulled two of my last few homemade goodies from my vest, a fire bomb that used jellied white gas, and a plain old pipe bomb. Fumbling out an old-fashioned British lifeboat match, I struck it and lit both fuses. Then I set them on the landing and took off again.

  “AJ, you must accelerate. You will not be at minimum safe distance when detonation occurs. You have eleven seconds.”

  I reached way down deep and pushed myself to pick up speed, desperately jumping stairs three at a time in an effort to get away. The railing shook harder than before as War gained on me.

  “Detonation in three, two, one…”

  He was off by a second, the explosion of light, heat, sound and pressure wave reaching me a moment after his countdown finished. It took me off my feet.

  Rikki shot out from the stairs to hover over the open space in the middle, his nose pointed down, tail fans in reverse to hold him in place.

  “Status of War?”

  He paused, then his e-mag gun fired, the resulting thunk of metal on metal sounding just as a cable came slashing up through the air. It just missed Rikki’s suddenly lifting form, instead impacting and wrapping around the railing in front of me. Instantly I heard the whine of a motor and the cable went visibly taut, vibrating with strain.

  On reflex, I shoved the ChemJet over the railing, muzzle pointed down, and triggered the rest of the magazine.

  Then a massive form was rising up to my level, the cable wound tight to its torn-up metal body.

  War had me dead to rights, although the big bot looked really bad. Half of its upper body was a melted, slagged mess, bits of burning jelly were all over its side and back, and it had what I assumed were a half dozen ChemJet rifle holes in it.

  Rikki fired another e-mag round into the melted top, but War just sat there, bound to the railing by its cable. Only one of its body segments seemed able to still spin, and a sharp blade suddenly sprang out from the arm on that segment.

  I pulled my 9mm Magnum from the chest holster and shot the cable two, three, four times till it parted with a high-pitched ting. War fell backward but I could see that one of its four walking legs was still clamped onto the nearest post of the railing, so hard that the metal post had deformed. So I shot that too—the post, that is. Emptied the rest of the magazine, twelve rounds, shooting first at the base of the post then just above the hydraulically powered talon that clutched the crumpled metal.

  The high-speed pistol bullets might not hurt the heavy armor of the bot, but they sliced through the mild steel of the railing post like butter. My gun locked open on empty, the pipe wiggled and held, then suddenly, with another loud ping, let go, sending the big bot plummeting down the stairwell center.

  I heard it bouncing off concrete and the metal railing all the way to the bottom, where it made a crash that shook the stairwell.

  “Bot War is effectively nonfunctional,” Rikki announced.

  “I shacking hope so!” I said, starting back up the awful stairs, reloading first my rifle and then my pistol as I climbed.

  Chapter 18

  “Holy Hell, Gurung! What the fuck did you do back there?” Tyson greeted me as I pounded up to the landing where they were crouched. He had to just about yell.

  “We killed the other drone. It took some doing,” I said, just as loudly.

  “And alerted every drone everywhere,” Kwan said, glancing over his shoulder at me. The two operators had stopped on a landing, crouching with weapons pointed up.

  “Well, surprise was already lost, so I figured we ought to go for shock and awe,” I said.

  Out of habit, I glanced over at Rikki to gauge what he might be sensing. You learn to read people’s body language from the time you’re a baby. Turns out that drones have it too. “They made it through the door,” I guessed, speaking to my drone.

  Kwan answered me before Rikki could. “That’s what we think.”

  “Gunnery Sergeant Kwan is correct. By expending the full charge of four laser-equipped UAVs, the enemy cut through all of the steel hinges. They then crashed more units into the door to push it out of the frame,” Rikki said.

  “Freaking know-it-all drone,” Tyson said, but there wasn’t any anger in his tone.

  Overhead, I heard the angry super bee buzz of a swarm of drones. “What’s your plan?”

  “We’re going to toss an anti-UAV grenade up there when they get closer, then shoot like crazed maniacs,” Tyson said. “We’ll call it the Gurung maneuver.”

  “Nice,” was all I had time to say before Rikki suddenly tilted back so that his nose pointed up the stairwell, one of his under-wing missile pods rotating out and then firing a micro missile, all in the time it took for me to draw a breath for my next comment. Immediately after the shot, he went back to horizontal and shot out of the well space,
moving to take up a position directly over my head.

  A split-second later, an explosion came from overhead and parts of drones rained down along with bits of concrete and dust. Ignoring the debris, Rikki zipped back out into the well, rotated vertical again, and fired his e-mag twice, rapid fire. Then he swung back over top of me as two mostly intact Skyhawks fell down the well.

  Tyson and Kwan exchanged a glance as they straightened up from their protective crouches.

  “His plan is better,” Tyson said, deadpan. The crash of the drones hitting ground floor echoed up from below.

  “Currently path to floor eighteen is clear. Be advised large numbers of UAVs inbound to seventeenth floor.”

  “Let’s hustle,” Kwan said and we raced up the stairs.

  Two flights up, we found the steel door lying across the landing. Tyson fumbled an XM-2080 NE from a pocket and stuck its magnetic base to the metal door. “Shove it back into place,” he said as he fiddled with the settings. Kwan and I grabbed the edges of the heavy door and lifted it back up, then crammed it into the doorway. It didn’t fit perfectly and I pulled back to smack it, but Tyson caught my arm. “I set it to arm for vibration in ten seconds… sometimes they arm a little faster.”

  “Roger that,” I said, stepping back.

  “I must advise that selected thermobaric munition is potentially overpowered for this application.”

  “Go big or go home, drone,” Tyson replied.

  “Roughly analogous to the phrase—bring enough gun. However, in this instance, it may potentially destabilize the floor structure.”

  “We’ll take that chance,” Gunny Kwan said.

  “AJ, if the building structure becomes dangerous, I will carry you down.”

  “Hey, what about us?” Tyson protested.

  Rikki stayed silent.

  “Let’s go find Plum Blossom and its two playmates,” I said to change up the awkward silence.

  “Playmates?” Kwan asked.

  “Rikki says that the remaining horsemen bots, Famine and Death, are with it up on eighteen.”

  “Awesome,” Tyson said with a bite to his voice.

  Kwan, ever the professional, just started to climb the stairs to the next landing. When he got there, he crouched down and looked at me for a few seconds, his mind clearly at work.

  “Okay, we need a plan,” he said, looking back and forth between us as we crouched next to him, looking up at the door to floor eighteen. We waited for it, but he didn’t say anything. Then his head snapped around to look at my drone. “Rikki? What have you got?”

  “Target CThree is occupying the middle of the floor space above us. One horseman bot is just outside the stairwell door. I am unable to ascertain exactly where the other one is, except that it is on the other side of the floor space and too close for arming distance. Optic cloaks have not come back online and Zone network is likely aware of EMP tactic used on ground floor.

  “In approximately thirty-two seconds, additional UAVs will arrive via the seventeenth floor. Providing that XM-2080 Novel Explosive does not destabilize the building, that floor will become temporarily free of UAVs. This unit is equipped with Artemis high explosive air-to-air, Goliath anti-armor, and Ares thermobaric micro missiles. Rikki unit will exit building via open building structure on floor seventeen. Cover fire from additional UAVs will be provided by Sergeant Perry, Gunnery Sergeant Kwan, and AJ. This unit will target Spider and horseman drones with appropriate missiles. Upon successful destruction of Plum Blossom and horseman drones, this team will egress building utilizing rappelling equipment currently in both sergeants’ packs via the stairwell.

  “Evasion from Zone is low probability, but highest chances occurs if unit Plum Blossom is destroyed.”

  “Shit, that could work,” Tyson Perry said grudgingly.

  “Yeah, from outside the building he’d have the necessary standoff distance to arm his missiles,” Kwan agreed, turning to look at me. “What?”

  “He’s going to be a sitting duck for any and all UAVs that swarm in. We’re going to have to shoot like we’ve never shot before if we’re going to have a chance of keeping them off him,” I said.

  “Worried you’re not up to the mission, Gurung?” Tyson challenged.

  “I’m worried that you’re not up to the task,” I said.

  He snorted. “Hear that, Gunny?”

  “He’s right. If you recall, he had the highest scores of everyone he trained. We’re going to have to be on our game or we’ll lose our biggest weapon,” Kwan said with a nod at Rikki.

  Suddenly the world ended. I mean, that’s what it felt like when the stairwell below us erupted into explosion and fire, while the whole building shook like it was caught in a massive earthquake. A huge pressure wave blasted up the well, shoving me so hard into the wall that I blacked out for a second.

  Chapter 19

  Luckily we’d all been crouching on the stairs, so when my vision cleared, my skull was only lying across Sergeant Perry’s legs, instead of on a concrete and metal stair edge with my head caved in. But I couldn’t seem to get a breath.

  The other two came into focus, both looking as dazed as I was. Tyson had a bleeding nose, and dust was falling into both of their faces. My face was clear and when I looked up, I spotted Rikki hovering right over top of me. All three of us were sucking air like lowlanders on Everest. Then I noticed blood coming from both soldiers’ ears and when I touched my own ear, it came away sticky and red.

  Rikki rumbled something but I couldn’t make out the words. He moved out over the well so that all of us could see his upper surface and the holo display that lit up.

  Oxygen levels have been dangerously depleted by air-fuel explosion of XM-2080 Novel Explosive. I am using my fans to bring oxygenated air down from above.

  Immediately he took up station over all three of us, half of his fans pushing air down on us while the other half kept pushing back upward to hold his position.

  It took at least ten or fifteen seconds before I could stop gulping like a fish out of water and sit up to take stock. My ears were filled with a steady ringing sound and the side of my head hurt from its impact with the wall. But my brain was coming back online and I could see the other two were in similar conditions.

  “Ssstatus?” I asked, shaking my head. Rikki didn’t move for about five seconds, just continuing to blow air on us, but then he moved back out over the open stairwell and his hologram lit back up.

  Power at 55% percent. Number four fan operating at 83% of capacity. All other systems are nominal. Floor 17 currently empty of UAVs. Suggest proceeding with plan.

  I looked at the other two. Kwan nodded, but Tyson looked a little bit out of it. The Gunny and I climbed to our feet, then each took an arm to help the Ranger up. He got upright, then shook his arms for us to let go.

  Without a word, we checked our weapons and gear. When the other two looked up, I signed “Let’s go.”

  Both men nodded and we started down the stairs, Rikki first, followed by me, then Tyson, with the Gunny taking the six position and watching over his shoulder as we descended. A single flight of stairs brought us to a scene of complete destruction. It wasn’t just that the door was gone; the whole doorframe had been blown out of the wall by the blast. Beyond that, it looked like floor seventeen had been eviscerated. No paper, no intact furniture, nothing left on the walls of the hall, just black soot.

  Rikki led us smoothly through the empty devastation of the hallway and as we got further onto the floor, a welcome breeze blew in on our faces. When we were far enough in, we could see that the windows were gone—completely. Of course, this was the second time I’d had a hand in blowing up poor floor seventeen. But not only were the windows and their frames gone, the whole wall was ripped open to the outside world. Surprisingly, this far from the thermobaric grenade’s explosion point, there was still office debris and furniture.